A Class 12 Bengaluru resident, Sahithi Pingali will soon have a minor planet in the Milky Way named after her. The student of Inventure Academy in Bengaluru Sahithi joins a group of elite people to have a planet named after them. She received the honour for her research work ‘on the specks of the froth of Bengaluru’s polluted lakes’. It is a part of her winning at the world’s largest pre-college science competition, Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) in Los Angeles.

Sahithi won the Gold Medal for her research on ‘An Innovative Crowdsourcing Approach to Monitoring Freshwater Bodies’ on Bengaluru’s lakes at ISWEEEP (The International Sustainable World Engineering Energy Environment Project) Olympiad held in Texas earlier this month. After her ISEF win, The Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) decided to name a planet after her. The Laboratory which has the right to name minor planets made the decision after she came within the top 3% of ISEF.